We’ve selected a slightly unusual way to organize the presentation of scholarly papers at the We Robot 2012 conference. For the single-paper presentations, rather than have paper authors present their own papers, we’ve chosen a group of distinguished discussants and asked them to do the presentation, and then to also offer an appreciation and critique of it. The author(s) will then reply to the discussant’s presentation before opening the floor to comments and questions. Moderators of panel discussions will organize the conversations on the panels they are leading.

Peter Asaro

Peter Asaro will be the Discussant for Josh Storrs Hall’s paper Machine Agency: a Philosophical and Technological Roadmap on Sunday, April 22nd at the 8:30am at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Peter Asaro is Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York, New York, and founding member and co-director of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, a Masters in Computer Science, and a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A. Michael Froomkin

A. Michael Froomkin will be the Discussant for Jason Millar & Ian Kerr’s paper Delegation, Relinquishment and Responsibility: The Prospect of Expert Robotson Sunday, April 22nd at the 11:30am at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Professor Froomkin, the Laurie Silvers & Mitchel Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law, is the Chair of the We Robot 2012 Program Committee. Professor Froomkin received his J.D. from Yale Law School and a M.Phil in History of International Relations from Cambridge University in England, which he obtained while on a Mellon Fellowship. He is the founding editor of the online law review Jotwell, “The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)”. Prior to teaching, Professor Froomkin practiced international arbitration law in the London office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. His writing and research interest include Internet governance, electronic democracy, and privacy.

Bernard H. Oxman

Bernard H. Oxman will be the Moderator for the Panel Presentation on Military Robotics on Sunday, April 22nd at the 3:15pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Professor Oxman is the Richard A. Hausler Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. He has a J.D. from Columbia Law School in New York, N.Y. Professor Oxman is Co-Editor in Chief of the American Journal of International Law. In 2003, he served as judge ad hoc of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Professor Oxman has recently been named judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in a maritime delimitation case between Romania and Ukraine. He is the only American Lawyer to ever be appointed to serve as judge ad hoc before both of these international tribunals. Prior to teaching at the University of Miami School of Law, Professor Oxman was Assistant Legal Advisor for Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs of the U.S. Department of States.

Warfare technology widens the human-technology gap in combat. Human beings are becoming the weak link in the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act Loop (OODA Loop) because of the increasing need to collect and process vast amounts of data. The combat use of Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs) is ushering in an era of de-humanized warfare, where human beings are less present in combat zones. The tension between LAR autonomy and human accountability for war crimes raises legal, ethical, and policy concerns. Professor Gross argues that current domestic and international criminal law is ill prepared to apportion human accountability in the event a LAR commits a war crime. His paper proposes more effective methods for apportioning criminal responsibility in such situations.

Oren Gross will present When Machines Kill: Criminal Responsibility for International Crimes Committed by Lethal Autonomous Robots at the Military Robotics Panel Presentation on Sunday, April 22nd at 3:15pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Oren Gross is the Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he is also the Director of the Institute of International Legal & Security Studies. He has a LL.M. and SJD from Harvard Law School and an LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Professor Gross is an internationally recognized expert in national security law, international law, and international trade.

Combat is changing, and more transformative changes loom in the horizon. Today’s unmanned systems (UMSs) require human input to operate; however, the next generation of UMSs will operate with little to no human input. Autonomous UMSs may fundamentally alter our relationship with International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Markus Wagner’s paper explores the development of UMSs in three ways. First, UMSs will have a dehumanizing effect on two IHL principles: distinction and proportionality. Second, Wagner traverses the moral implications of this dehumanization. For example, personal responsibility is a fundamental characteristic of IHL and acts as a deterrent for those who decide to deploy autonomous weapon systems (AWSs). The widespread use of UMSs may dilute the deterrent effect of personal responsibility. In response, Wagner explores possible ways of implementing personal responsibility into the design stage of AWSs. Finally, he argues that the introduction of UMSs will lower the risk to human soldiers in combat, thereby, altering the risk calculus of engaging in combat. As a result, militaries may be more willing to engage in combat.

Markus Wagner will present The Dehumanization of International Humanitarian Law: Independently Operating Weapon System and Modern Armed Conflict at the Military Robotics Panel Presentation on Sunday, April 22nd at 3:15pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Markus Wagner is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. He has a Masters of the Science of Law from Stanford Law School in Stanford, California and a J.D. from the University of Giessen Law School in Giessen, Germany. Professor Wagner teaches courses in International Law, International Economic Law, Comparative Law, and a Miami-Leipzig Seminar in Leipzig, Germany. His research interests focus on robotics and military technology as well as international trade law.

The German author Erich Maria Remarque once wrote that although the square is empty, it “would be madness to go farther—the machine-gun is covering the square.” Robotic technology is poised to have a greater effect on warfare than the machinegun. Robots will make human combatants more lethal and possibly take them out of combat. Therefore, we need more than traditional rules of war when discussing when and how to use robots in combat. Richard O’Meara’s paper begins such a discussion by observing that the technology used to control lethal robots has begun a period of drastic change. Thus, any consensus reached today will become obsolete in less than a decade. Next, O’Meara observes that 20th Century International Humanitarian Law (IHL) assumes that all parties have a utilitarian interest in diminishing collateral damage. O’Meara argues that IHL is fairly irrelevant to the 21st Century because many modern combat forces have little interest in diminishing collateral damage. Furthermore, the differences between manned and autonomous robots suggest that we should apply different rules to each. In particular, the laws of war should not be stretched to accommodate the vast destructive potential of robots.

Richard O’Meara will present The Intersection: The Rules of War and The Use of Unarmed, Remotely Operated, and Autonomous Robotics Systems Platform and Weapons… Some Cautions at the Military Robotics Panel Presentation on Sunday, April 22nd at 3:15pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Dr. Richard O’Meara, Brigadier General, U.S.A. (Ret.) is Program Coordinator and Lecturer for the Homeland Security Studies Program at Ocean County College, in Toms River, New Jersey. He has a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Global Affairs from Rutgers University. Dr. O’Meara has served as an Adjunct Faculty Member at several universities around the country and is currently a Professor of Global and Homeland Security Affairs.

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) justifies the use of military force with a necessity/proportionality calculus, which weighs a military operation’s necessity against the harm resulting from carrying out that operation. Robotic warfare proponents believe the advanced sensory capabilities of machines will outperform human soldiers and save lives by reducing injustices in armed conflict by better and more consistently comporting with IHL norms. Ian Kerr and Katie Szilagyi argue that Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs) threaten to erode the IHL framework because the robotization of warfare permits us to redefine IHL norms. The authors illustrate how laws of war purport to the principle of technological

Katie Szilagyi

neutrality—the belief that general laws are superior to specific ones, and that forbidding the implementation of particular technologies is inappropriate. They reject the application of this principle, arguing that we must consider approaches that contemplate the transformative effects of robotic military technologies.

Ian Kerr and Katie Szilagyi will present Asleep at the Switch? How Lethal Autonomous Robots Become a Force Multiplier of Military Necessity at the Military Robotics Panel Presentation on Sunday, April 22nd at 3:15pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. Ian Kerr is a Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa, Canada, where he holds cross-appointments to the Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Philosophy. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a JD from Western University. Dr. Kerr is the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology. Katie Szilagyi is a current J.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She will clerk at the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa, Ontario in 2012-2013. Her primary research interest is in legal responses to social and structural challenges created by new technologies.

When a machine commits a moral or legal wrong, the universal governing standard attributes the fault to the machine’s designers and builders. The more machines resemble and act like human beings, the more human status we assign them. Today, we are at a precipice where machines are beginning to make decisions, which would imply legal and moral responsibilities if made by humans. J. Storrs Hall notes that the learning component in machines is increasing as they rely more on experience and training than on programming. He argues that in the near future, apportioning fault will present challenges because a machine’s wrongful actions will no longer be clearly attributable to its designers and builders. Dr. Hall’s paper discusses the philosophical, architectural, and practical issues involved in assigning the role of moral agent to a machine.

J Storrs Hall will present Machine Agency: a Philosophical and Technological Roadmap on Sunday, April 22nd at 8:30am at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. J. Storrs Hall has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University and published the first book on machine ethics. He is an established author in the field of artificial general intelligence and was recently President of the Foresight Institute in Menlo Park, CA, a leading think tank focused on transformative technologies. Dr. Hall was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, Inc., a developer of open-source computational modeling tools for designing and analyzing atomically precise nanosystems.

Rapid development and deployment of robots in military and civilian settings is prompting policy and ethical discussions as a result of the inadequacies of current laws. For example, Paro, a therapy robot used in nursing homes, is classified as a Class 2 Medical Device (C2MD) in the United States. This is a problem because C2MDs include unsophisticated devices, such as powered wheelchairs, and the interactive nature of Paro-like robots makes them significantly different from other C2MDs.

Ergun Calisgan

The authors provide an overview of Roboethics Organizations and Roboethics Initiatives (RIs). They then analyze the applicability of bottom-up policymaking approaches used in non-robotic spheres and the limitations of national and disciplinary boundaries on global RIs. As proponents of open-source paradigms, the authors propose an online Roboethics knowledgebase, called Open Roboethics, with an open discussion and code design space. This centralized online space will provide policymakers and robot designers with an efficient and transparent means to communicate societal values.

Gianmarco Veruggio

AJung Moon, Ergun Calisgan, Fiorella Operto, Gianmarco Veruggio, and H.F. Machiel Van der Loos will present Open Roboethics: Establishing an Online Community for Accelerated Policy and Design Change on Sunday, April 22nd at 1:45pm at We Robot 2012 at the University of Miami School of Law in Coral Gables, Florida. AJung Moon is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her M.A.Sc. thesis work was on making robots hesitate as a means to communicatively resolve human-robot resource conflicts.

Fiorella Operto

Ergun Calisgan is a M.A.Sc. Mechanical Engineering candidate at the University of British Columbia and writing his thesis on “Observing Nonverbal Human Behavior Cues for Automated Turn-Taking During Human-Robot Collaboration.” Fiorella Operto has a M.A. in Philosophy of Science at the Universitá di Milano in Italy. She is a contributor to the scientific book series I Dialoghi and in 2000 co-founded the School of Robotics in Italy, of which she remains President. Gianmarco Veruggio has a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering from

H.F. Machiel Van der Loos

Genoa University in Italy. He is an expert in robotics for extreme environments and is Director of Research at CNR-IEIIT in Genoa. He co-founded the School of Robotics and in 2002 coined the term and proposed the concept of Roboethics. H.F. Machiel Van der Loos is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia and the Associate Director of the CARIS lab in Vancouver, Canada. He has a Ph.D. in interactive robotics from Stanford University in Stanford, California. Professor Van der Loos has co-authored three books, authored 27 journal papers, and has a patent on a sleep quality improvement technology called SleepSmart.

ABOUT WE ROBOT

Robotics seems increasingly likely to become a transformative technology. This conference will build on existing scholarship exploring the role of robotics to examine how the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield disrupts existing legal regimes or requires rethinking of various policy issues.

If you are on the front lines of robot theory, design, or development, we hope to see you and to enable conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots will operate.